Reading Notes #644

This post gathers my recent reading notes on artificial intelligence, programming, and a few inspiring podcasts. It includes links to articles, tutorials, and fascinating discussions. Whether you're interested in the latest AI developments, .NET tools, or modern architectures, there's plenty here to spark your curiosity. 

Happy reading!

AI

• Microsoft Copilot in Azure is now generally available | Microsoft Community Hub (Ruhiyyih Mahalati) - Oh wow! That was fast! If you haven't tried it yet, you should it's extremely useful and quick. Ask something about your resources or services you would like to use.

• Build a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in C# - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - A nice tutorial about the MCP server and how to use one in VSCode

Programming

• Generating architecture diagrams from .NET Aspire resources at publish time (Anthony Simmon) - This is one new feature that will be so useful. How many times did I need to refer to a diagram that was outdated.

• Exploring new .NET releases with Dev Containers - .NET Blog (Mike Kistler) - Really cool trick shared in this post. Yes, trying the new version in a container but how that container is build; that's cool!

• .NET Aspire 9.2 is Now Available with New Ways to Deploy - .NET Blog (Jeffrey Fritz) - This week was the release of Aspire new version, and it's packed with many features. The launch party video is also very interesting.

• Aspire: A Platform for Reusable Infrastructure (David Fowler) - For once, I think Aspire is the perfect name because it's inspiring.

• How we ended up rewriting NuGet Restore in .NET 9 - .NET Blog (The NuGet Team) - A very interesting article that explains how a tool that all .NET developers use got rewritten

• Porting Code with LLMs (Mark Heath) - It's always interesting to see how people use AI to help them do their work. Love it!

Podcasts

• Per Kops: Architecture of Ollama and Local LLMs - Episode 342 (Azure & DevOps Podcast) - An interesting discussion about Olama (local LLMs), .NET architecture, and Semantic Kernel.

• Vertical Slice Architecture with Jeremy Miller (.NET Rocks!) - This episode is about Vertical Slice Architecture, what it is, when it makes sense to use it, and some comparisons with the others that we know.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #495

Good Monday, 

Already time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

Suggestion of the week

• Include diagrams in your Markdown files with Mermaid (Martin Woodward, Adam Biagianti) - This is very interesting. For a simple little diagram, we can now do that in text in the same document... Looking forward to trying it. Mermaid is also supported in Azure DevOps

Cloud

• Azure CLI: Delete All Resources Within Resource Group (Chris Pietschmann) - Nice tips to delete all resources in a resources group. However I prefer deploying an empty resource group with override, work each time, and the command seems simpler.

• Creating Azure DevOps WIKI Pages from within a pipeline - part 2 (Stefan Stranger) - Super cools automation during a deployment. I love it.

• Host Static Web Sites for Free in Azure (Sameer Doshi) - There are still so many running on complex systems. Have a look.

• Isolated Azure Function in .Net 6 (Paul Michaels) - A nice short post that highlights the differences between these two types/versions of functions

• Start Creating Azure Bicep Modules for Code Reuse (Chris Pietschmann) - That looks amazing, and simple to do. I have a few complex ARM templates, I should try to break them down in bicep to make them easier to read and maintain.

Programming

• Observer Design Pattern in C# (Code Maze) - A really clear tutorial. I've been waiting for this kind of refresh to implement this pattern in a text-based game I was building... Maybe now is the time.

• 10 Best C# NuGet Packages to Improve Your Productivity in 2022 (Rajeshwari Pandinagarajan) - What I like with those lists of tools/ packages is that most of the time you found something you didn't know.

• Disguising Podman as Docker Desktop on Windows (Mark Richards) - Nice! A Docker alternative that could potentially interest many, but for myself, I will stick to Docker. I'm an occasional citizen, and I feel there will be more docs with the current favorite.

• Happy 20th Anniversary, .NET! (Beth Massi) - Very happy to see .NET reaching 20 so strong. Nice post, nice video packed with interesting anecdotes and nice moments.

• Introducing FakeAuth for .NET Core (Caleb Jenkins) - That looks very interesting! For PoC, demo, or temporary solution it's brilliant. Code and sample in GitHub.

Book

Greenlights

Author: Matthew McConaughey

This autobiography is funny, light, interesting, and even weird at some moments. But you know what? I liked it. I totally kept some quotes, as I found them good. I partially read it and listen to it. The audio version is done by Matthew and it's nice to hear him telling us his story.

~frank

 

Reading Notes #475

Every "Monday", I share my reading notes. Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

The suggestion of the week

• What makes a good Git commit? (Al Tenhundfeld) - Great post. It's always good to read opinions from others about collaborating as it helps to better understand others, be in their shoes, and then become a better team player.

Cloud

• Azure Service Bus: Queues vs Topics (Davide Bellone) - Most people know about queues but topics is not as well known. This is a great post to understand why, how, and what you need.

• Azure Service Bus and C# - an introduction (Davide Bellone) - This is a nice and detailed post perfect to get started with the service Bus and queues.

• Building and auto-deploying an ASP.NET Core application - Part 7 - Improving your build and release processes ( Imar Spaanjaars) - This series is gold for anyone interested to learn more about best practices when deploying. It covers many different scenarios and got into the details.

• Creating Azure Functions, Custom Connectors and using them inside of Power apps (Charles Sterling) - Quick tutorial that connects two amazing tools.

• Leveling Up Static Web Apps With the CLI (Aaron Powell) - A pretty cool demo running locally. The explanation of the tasks fike is awesome.

Programming

• Best Practices for Microservices (dilshan ukwattage) - 7 best practices to help us building great microservices solutions.

• Conditional compilation for ignoring method calls with the ConditionalAttribute (Andrew Lock) - An interesting post about commands that we don't see that often, or at least that I don't see often.

• How to use GitHub actions and Contentful webhooks to show your latest blog posts on your GitHub profile README (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Wow, This is pretty cool! I didn't think we could do this kind of thing with our page...but I guess we can do all we want; love it.

• Extending HttpClient Testing With Templating (Adam Storr) - A nice quick post that shares unit test pattern

• Exploring .NET interactive notebooks with VS Code (Andrew Lock) - Nice practical utilization of that tech and I love the historic vibe into it.

• Git – What to do when things go wrong (pcmichaels) - Wonderful post...We all been there when we screwed up then not sure how to fix things. This post is packed with helpful commands and explanations on how to use them and the expected result

Miscellaneous

• Diagram as Code with Diagrams (Sam Cogan) - Interesting tool, I use drawio most of the time because it doesn't require any installation, but I am curious to see it.

• Speaking CTO (Gregor Hohpe) - Nive post with really good and simple best practices.

~Frank